no more gymmers, please. because gyms don't make hunks. all these gyms around here are just churning out these strange people, with the body of a construction worker and the personality of a mouse. it's just distasteful, like pop songs getting sung by an opera singer. it's just painful.
if u wanna be a hunk, start from your personality. so that when you get that body working, you know how to handle it, and so that behind those huge chests, you also have an equally big heart to match up to it. because, because, the size of your personality matters.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Thought this was interesting. An exhibition at Tokyo featuring 116 life-sized panels of persons who had passed away in accidents and crimes, including those of children and of those who lost their lives to drunk drivers. The driving message of the exhibition was "life", and the panels featured articles such as photographs and shoes that belonged to the deceased, as well as messages written by the bereaved. In a time when Japan experiences so many murders and deaths, it was only timely that such an exhibition remind us again of how precious life is, and how much more we need to address crimes and accidents as very urgent social problems.
Original text: 生命のメッセージ展 始まる
Original text: 生命のメッセージ展 始まる
Friday, April 21, 2006
energy, rhythm and line
is what i have learnt from swimming, and is my current analogy for everything around me. refraining from writing long essays that give examples and then explain these examples, here's the heart of it all:
[energy - callibre]
energy to me, is the deep capacity for action. energy does not determine what you do or how much of it you can do, but rather, at what level you can do it. it is the substance that is consumed in action, the wax that is burnt to give light.
[rhythm - heartbeat]
rhythm is the consistency at which you can do things. in the short term, this is how regular you are to perform. it is the dynamism on a microscopic level that paces you to look forward.
[line - imagination]
it would be tempting to use the word "vision" but i thought "imagination" is less assuming. line is the process that pictures the present, imagines the future, and manifests this imagination in the physical world. this was my last addition to the set, when my freestyle somehow wasn't moving. line is what makes you move. line gives you the big picture that allows you to pace your rhythm.
That's all. There would be many things that flow from this analogy... but that would be another lesson.
is what i have learnt from swimming, and is my current analogy for everything around me. refraining from writing long essays that give examples and then explain these examples, here's the heart of it all:
[energy - callibre]
energy to me, is the deep capacity for action. energy does not determine what you do or how much of it you can do, but rather, at what level you can do it. it is the substance that is consumed in action, the wax that is burnt to give light.
[rhythm - heartbeat]
rhythm is the consistency at which you can do things. in the short term, this is how regular you are to perform. it is the dynamism on a microscopic level that paces you to look forward.
[line - imagination]
it would be tempting to use the word "vision" but i thought "imagination" is less assuming. line is the process that pictures the present, imagines the future, and manifests this imagination in the physical world. this was my last addition to the set, when my freestyle somehow wasn't moving. line is what makes you move. line gives you the big picture that allows you to pace your rhythm.
That's all. There would be many things that flow from this analogy... but that would be another lesson.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
my take on internet censorship
barring physical distance and network infrastructure that gives rise to poor connection, the internet has no definite boundaries.
yes, there are administrative boundaries, that can control how and to whom information can go out from private servers, but controlling what your users can access, on a nation-wide level, is quite a different matter.
on private networks, it is feasible, common and fair to implement proxies through which all traffic must be filtered, since such networks are relatively small (usually only up to a few thousand machines) and usually all the servers and often most of the clients as well, are completely owned by an organisation.
on a nation-wide network, however, users are connected through backbone lines to the internet. information is not just freely accessible, but overflowing. The practicals:
1. for gateways that filter on domains, a trivial workaround would be accessing content via public gateways. gone to china, done that.
2. for gateways that filter on content, encrypted traffice via a know foreign server would do the trick.
3. if you're looking for pure content, you could always try another language.
4. you could always get your friend overseas to keep you updated. if you don't have one, you could always find one on some chat server, forum, community, IM or dating site.
5. enforcing policies on local content providers does not mean that similar content is not available. uses will find it on foreign servers. unless you can shut the whole america down...
6. some countries have export laws surrounding software. but always, someone out there writes something similar and gives it away for free, from a server sitting in a country that doesn't have such laws. i still think it stupid to have a law that dictates whether you can send software out of a country purely based on the fact that the software was written while in a certain country. anyway, the link is usually there and you just have to click "OK"...
the principles:
1. the whole concept of the internet sits on the abstraction of physical connections. this is philosophically in disagreement with trying to enforce physically-based policies.
2. the internet is full of redundant links. meaning that if you close down one link (ie, filter at a gateway), chances are there are other links to the content.
3. search engines cache content. even if a content has been taken down, it is possible that a cache of it is available.
4. because we do commercial transactions on the net, we need encryption to work. the same encryption can let us tunnel through forign proxies and get to the content we want without the scrutinity of censoring proxies.
5. the internet is a world totally different from the physical world. the whole (yes, 100% of it) internet is made by hackers, not by policy makers. hackers made it work beyond physical and political boundaries and policy makers cannot change that. if there were any rules or laws in this world, their enforcement and implementation would have to be as profoundly different as the internet is different from freight routes.
6. people who grew up with the internet create a different social atmosphere. we need to remember how piracy actually drives sales through free marketing and customer education, and work from there. in the real world, theft leads to loss of profit. but when you step into the software world, everything is about knowledge. and it is knowledge that drives the hunger for greater knowledge. the only real reason people want to protect their trade in knowledge, i believe, is because they are not confident of growing faster than their customers to continuously attain a greater capacitiy to provide even more knowledge. ridiculous sales margins claiming to retrieve previous investments in research, at the end of the day, i believe, contributes to social stress. and i think the stress is building up - no longer between the workers and the beauracrary, but between knowledege workers who are scattered all over, including within the beauracrary, and the managers, sales people and politicians, whose sole purpose in this all is to reap as much unbelievable profit as they can. the difference is this - the beauracry used to own all the facilities in which workers can create something of value that can be sold by the beauracracy for money or power, but now, the worker owns all of this. in fact, the worker himself, is the facility from which all value flows. admitedly, the greed and selfishness of people will never change. but a new social order where the knowledge workers hold not just knowledge but also the ability to implement policies and managers have the authority but not the means to put their policies across, it would be interesting to see how they would evolve. as knowledge economies become more specialised and workers become more highly skilled and self-sufficient while markets becoming more discerning, the power game i think, would take on a new dimension. in such a world, the top-down approach to internet censorship is simply strange.
7. the reason we are starting to have social problems arising from the use of the internet, i believe, is not because we are not controlling the medium strictly enough, but because the policy makers have not come to terms with its nature. social response all these problems are signs that the old order is losing ground and a new balance has not been achived. i think policy makers need to change their approach to the internet and cosider it part of the social fabric in order to make policies that will work. but this might take a generation, when those who grew up with the internet become policy makers.
well, give and take, that's my take. might not be yours, for now, but let's just wait and see.
barring physical distance and network infrastructure that gives rise to poor connection, the internet has no definite boundaries.
yes, there are administrative boundaries, that can control how and to whom information can go out from private servers, but controlling what your users can access, on a nation-wide level, is quite a different matter.
on private networks, it is feasible, common and fair to implement proxies through which all traffic must be filtered, since such networks are relatively small (usually only up to a few thousand machines) and usually all the servers and often most of the clients as well, are completely owned by an organisation.
on a nation-wide network, however, users are connected through backbone lines to the internet. information is not just freely accessible, but overflowing. The practicals:
1. for gateways that filter on domains, a trivial workaround would be accessing content via public gateways. gone to china, done that.
2. for gateways that filter on content, encrypted traffice via a know foreign server would do the trick.
3. if you're looking for pure content, you could always try another language.
4. you could always get your friend overseas to keep you updated. if you don't have one, you could always find one on some chat server, forum, community, IM or dating site.
5. enforcing policies on local content providers does not mean that similar content is not available. uses will find it on foreign servers. unless you can shut the whole america down...
6. some countries have export laws surrounding software. but always, someone out there writes something similar and gives it away for free, from a server sitting in a country that doesn't have such laws. i still think it stupid to have a law that dictates whether you can send software out of a country purely based on the fact that the software was written while in a certain country. anyway, the link is usually there and you just have to click "OK"...
the principles:
1. the whole concept of the internet sits on the abstraction of physical connections. this is philosophically in disagreement with trying to enforce physically-based policies.
2. the internet is full of redundant links. meaning that if you close down one link (ie, filter at a gateway), chances are there are other links to the content.
3. search engines cache content. even if a content has been taken down, it is possible that a cache of it is available.
4. because we do commercial transactions on the net, we need encryption to work. the same encryption can let us tunnel through forign proxies and get to the content we want without the scrutinity of censoring proxies.
5. the internet is a world totally different from the physical world. the whole (yes, 100% of it) internet is made by hackers, not by policy makers. hackers made it work beyond physical and political boundaries and policy makers cannot change that. if there were any rules or laws in this world, their enforcement and implementation would have to be as profoundly different as the internet is different from freight routes.
6. people who grew up with the internet create a different social atmosphere. we need to remember how piracy actually drives sales through free marketing and customer education, and work from there. in the real world, theft leads to loss of profit. but when you step into the software world, everything is about knowledge. and it is knowledge that drives the hunger for greater knowledge. the only real reason people want to protect their trade in knowledge, i believe, is because they are not confident of growing faster than their customers to continuously attain a greater capacitiy to provide even more knowledge. ridiculous sales margins claiming to retrieve previous investments in research, at the end of the day, i believe, contributes to social stress. and i think the stress is building up - no longer between the workers and the beauracrary, but between knowledege workers who are scattered all over, including within the beauracrary, and the managers, sales people and politicians, whose sole purpose in this all is to reap as much unbelievable profit as they can. the difference is this - the beauracry used to own all the facilities in which workers can create something of value that can be sold by the beauracracy for money or power, but now, the worker owns all of this. in fact, the worker himself, is the facility from which all value flows. admitedly, the greed and selfishness of people will never change. but a new social order where the knowledge workers hold not just knowledge but also the ability to implement policies and managers have the authority but not the means to put their policies across, it would be interesting to see how they would evolve. as knowledge economies become more specialised and workers become more highly skilled and self-sufficient while markets becoming more discerning, the power game i think, would take on a new dimension. in such a world, the top-down approach to internet censorship is simply strange.
7. the reason we are starting to have social problems arising from the use of the internet, i believe, is not because we are not controlling the medium strictly enough, but because the policy makers have not come to terms with its nature. social response all these problems are signs that the old order is losing ground and a new balance has not been achived. i think policy makers need to change their approach to the internet and cosider it part of the social fabric in order to make policies that will work. but this might take a generation, when those who grew up with the internet become policy makers.
well, give and take, that's my take. might not be yours, for now, but let's just wait and see.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
stuck in the office
nowhere to go
no place to be
just myself
away from everything
what people think i am
supposed to be
stale
everywhere i breathe in the air
breathed on me
and now i just don't want to be
anything at all. i hate it that i used to be
such a good kid
that all these suckers around me are now putting chains around me
to keep me
the way i was; i hate it that i had not wasted all that energy
fighting parents that think i'll never learn to decide
what to do
next!
why does the world seem that bad when it is just one person
maybe two
who haven't learnt to love enough to let go?
Friday, March 03, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
言葉は
感情的で、
残酷で、
時に無力だ。
それでも
私たちは信じている、
言葉のチカラを。
Words are so emotional, so cruel, and at times, so feeble.
Still, we choose to deliver that power of words in which we believe.
とは、電車でみた朝日新聞「ジャーナリスト宣言」キャンペーンのキャッチコピー。なんて力強いと思う。ジャーナリズムの原点に戻す言葉だ。そして人間の生きる勇気を呼び出す言葉。信じていることを言う。信じている生き方で生きる。僕は僕らしく生きていけばいい。すばらしい言葉だと思う。人生を改めて、信じましょう。
I love these words from Asahi Shinbun's "Journalists' Declaration" compaign. Full of power, even returning journalism to its roots and calling forth the courage to live. The strength to speak one's mind, and to live the life that one believes in. To live just as one is. Despite all that is happening around us, it calls us to believe afresh, in life itself. Do not go gently into that good night / Fight, fight against the dying of the light!
感情的で、
残酷で、
時に無力だ。
それでも
私たちは信じている、
言葉のチカラを。
Words are so emotional, so cruel, and at times, so feeble.
Still, we choose to deliver that power of words in which we believe.
とは、電車でみた朝日新聞「ジャーナリスト宣言」キャンペーンのキャッチコピー。なんて力強いと思う。ジャーナリズムの原点に戻す言葉だ。そして人間の生きる勇気を呼び出す言葉。信じていることを言う。信じている生き方で生きる。僕は僕らしく生きていけばいい。すばらしい言葉だと思う。人生を改めて、信じましょう。
I love these words from Asahi Shinbun's "Journalists' Declaration" compaign. Full of power, even returning journalism to its roots and calling forth the courage to live. The strength to speak one's mind, and to live the life that one believes in. To live just as one is. Despite all that is happening around us, it calls us to believe afresh, in life itself. Do not go gently into that good night / Fight, fight against the dying of the light!
Thursday, January 26, 2006
time freezes at airports. it's funny, because it is exactly because everying is timed to the minute that time is frozen there. flights come in and go out all the time. and the florescent lighting doesn't give you a clue whether the sun was up outside. people of all races walk around you, some sitting around, as if waiting for eternity to begin, sometimes rushing like fish shooting themsleves at a floating bait. it is like the gears in a clockwork, that, by precisely being the mechanism on which time is built, alienates itself from the substance of time. the gears rotate, and maybe some arms move, but inside the clock, twelve midnight is just as well as any second that gives way to the next eternity. Four flights in five days, and my time stil hasn't seem to have thawed.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
mascular memory
amazing. i'm at the airport and tried logging into the public teminals with my password... and suddenly i couldn't log in... panicked and wondered what happened overnight because i had just logged in the night before... sat down with my notebook plugged into the free ports and tried and tried... until i tried logging into an account i log in everyday and my fingers just did it...
passwords are mascular conditioning, i tell you... your fingers remember them better than you do... give them a chance!
amazing. i'm at the airport and tried logging into the public teminals with my password... and suddenly i couldn't log in... panicked and wondered what happened overnight because i had just logged in the night before... sat down with my notebook plugged into the free ports and tried and tried... until i tried logging into an account i log in everyday and my fingers just did it...
passwords are mascular conditioning, i tell you... your fingers remember them better than you do... give them a chance!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)